When night fell, we watched Aunt Ulan’s cabin from afar, watching through binoculars for any movement. Two pieces of talismans laid in two separate ashtrays on my table. Long have we waited, until one of the talismans broke into fire, disintegrating into cinders swiftly in its ashtray before its counterpart in another tray burst into flames as well? I yanked my binoculars from the table and peered into its barrel, scanning intently on the outside of Aunt Ulan’s cabin. But everything was well; nothing outside was disturbed! I waited for another ten minutes, keeping a close watch at the cabin door. Something was wrong! I rushed out of my cabin, calling Lin Feng and Yuan Chongxi to keep up, and tore across the compound towards Aunt Ulan’s cottage. We stormed through the door and turned on the lamps. I inspected the lamb skin mannequins and found a tiny blood-red dot on the decoy I had set in Aunt Ulan’s bed! The enemy was here, and he had left! But how did he came in? We had been watching all the time with binoculars!

I collapsed into a chair and set a cigarette alight. I took a swig and began thinking. At last, I thought, slapping myself in the thigh! I extracted my Spirit Gourd and released a spirit wolf. “Come, let’s go!” I yelled to my companions, “Get the girls and be ready to move out!”

My father had mentioned expressly that performing poisonous curses required the caster to be physically present; the conjurer of the spell needed to transfer the medium of the curses, which in most cases were worms, bug, or vermin, to the victim. This was mostly done when the victim was unwary or unconscious. But Aunt Ulan had guards and subordinates around her most of the time. This would allow only a limited window of time for Zheng Tong to strike, thus reinforcing my suspicions that whatever devilry he had concocted, he could only act when Aunt Ulan was sleeping. This was the reason why I instructed for mannequins to be made and our supervision of her cabin with the help of my talismans. But I had overlooked a crucial point: Zheng Tong was also trained in the arcane skills of mediums and druids; he could also manipulate spirits and ghosts of little animals, such as weasels or mice to perform the curse in his stead.

There was virtually no way we would notice if Zheng Tong had indeed used spirits and ghosts to perform the curse for him, especially under the cover of darkness in the night. The destruction of my talisman indicated that someone, or something, had infiltrated my godmother’s cabin although we saw nothing outside. It was by a fortunate stroke of luck we discovered this early; Zheng Tong was still nearby, lying in hiding as he willed his spectral creatures to do his bidding. Hence the use of my spirit wolf; my spirit wolf had an acute sense of smell and the predator’s innate ability to see in the dark. We would only need to follow behind and my ghostly minion would surely lead us to him.

We returned to the cabin, the scene of the crime where we, with a few of Aunt Ulan’s henchwomen, followed my spirit wolf as it sniffed for the scent of its quarry and began its chase. The moon shed a bright glow upon the Mongolian plains as we rode in the night, spurring our horses after my spectral pet eastward. With the help of my Spirit Sight, I could clearly see the gossamer silhouette of my wolf, and to prevent from being discovered, I did not stop muttering words of incantations to control my wolf from being too close to its target. Zheng Tong, however poor his skills might be, was a learned person in druidic and mediumistic knowledge. He might be able to destroy my spirit wolf to prevent it from leading us to him if he discovered. Losing the wolf would be a pity; for they were painstakingly procured by risking our lives.

But I could see that Zheng Tong was also riding a horse, based on the speed of our movements. He moved quickly, although he was not sprinting. Slowly we remained on his scent, riding through the night that we began to see the first light of dawn beckoning over the crests in the horizon. Eventually, Aunt Ulan’s henchwomen began to realize that we were moving towards the mountains behind the Black Dragon Keep. So, the safest place was the most dangerous place, I mused. To think the sniveling Zheng Tong still lurked around the Black Dragon Keep! Still, the whole notion had me breaking out in a cold sweat. The remaining henchwomen that Aunt Ulan had left to guard the now-empty Black Dragon Keep might be in danger if we had been late in discovering Zheng Tong’s trails. He might even stand a chance of reclaiming the Keep. I sent one of the girls to travel to the Keep with one of my talismans and left her some instructions to assemble the sentries watching the Keep to move outside. They were to wait for my signal, while the rest of us continued on our hunt. The sun was almost up by the time we reached the rear mountains and we reached the mouth of a cave where I withdrew my spirit wolf. We laid an ambush outside while I quickly scribbled some instructions on a slip of paper. The paper was rolled into a tube which I tied with a blade of grass. I released my spirit eagle and commanded it to fly to the front part of Black Dragon Keep with my orders.

The woman that I had sent to assemble the guards of the Black Dragon Keep had ridden off with one of my talismans; the talisman would allow my spirit eagle to track her down easily to convey messages easily for her to act accordingly. We waited for more than ten minutes and my eagle returned. This was merely a menial task for it; the others at the Keep should already be in motion, I thought. In the slip of paper, I had ordered that all personnel within the Keep were to evacuate and move to the top of the mountain. They were to look for all ventilation shafts and holes and seal them with whatever grass or hay they could find. This was to cut off the supply of fresh air from the tunnels leading from the Keep into the bowels of the mountains behind and flush Zheng Tong out from hiding! Without fresh air inside, Zheng Tong would be forced to come out when he returned. The height of the ventilation shafts at the top of the mountain would prevent him from doing anything. We would only have to wait for him to show himself at the mouth of the cave!

Not losing a moment for respite, we began smoking while we waited for our prey, making full sure that everyone received my orders that no one was to fire until I gave the word.

We had barely kept eyes peeled at the entrance of the cave for a little more than ten minutes, when Zheng Tong scrambled out of the cave frantically, breathing the fresh air outside hungrily. Much to surprise and puzzlement of the henchwomen and Yuan Chongxi, he began walking in small circles, looking lost and disoriented. What he was doing, some of them murmured. Lin Feng peered at me with a devilish grin and flashed me a thumbs-up. He had realized what I had done. “You had Xiao Qi and the Sisters cast Ghost Barriers outside the cave?” he asked. I nodded to him and said, “Not just the cave, but the entire vicinity around the Black Dragon Keep!” This earned a burst of chortles from everyone and one of the girls snapped falteringly, “Would he not hear us laughing so loudly?” “He would,” I said, “But he would never be able to tell from which direction the laughter is coming from!” Ghost Barriers were a simple form of magic that ghosts and spirits were capable of to confound and bewitch their prey to disorient them and lead them astray. The bewitched person would never be able to tell direction and time, having caught in an endless loop of hallucinations and enchantments. But it did not take long for Zheng Tong to realize that he was being spellbound; he pricked himself with a knife and stripped off his pants to urinate, much to the dismay and annoyance of the henchwomen who quickly averted their gazes! These were two kind of methods to nullify the magic of Ghost Barriers, and he could use just one of them but he was using as many methods as he could come up with to free himself!

The wicked Lin Feng reached for a pebble and fired it like a dart. The little stone smacked on Zheng Tong’s private part, causing him so great a pain that he leaped in an agonizing jolt! Not willing to tarry any longer, I gave the word for the henchwomen to fire. A cascade of gunfire echoed across the valley as Zheng Tong was shot to death. I took out my Gourd and drew his soul into my gourd with a few words of magic…

At long last, the scourge of Zheng Tong had been vanquished. But his death would require a great deal of explanation to Tao Gang, I grimaced. Nevertheless, his death was crucial, lest he wrought even more unspeakable devilry. I gave instructions for the ventilation shafts to be reopened to restore air flow before we explored the tunnels that honeycombed the mountain. But our spelunking revealed nothing useful; the stone passages were only alternative escape routes out of the Keep during an invasion and nothing more. There was nothing inside, save for the shafts of sunlight piercing from the eaves of the caverns, illuminating the passages leading outward. I had some traps set around the mouth of the cave and we retreated back into the main hall of the Keep where we rested and had tea after the night’s ordeal.

We just exchanging banters over tea when a sentry rushed into the hall where we were resting. The lookout at the highest tower of the keep had spotted company of more than a hundred horsemen coming towards us, and they were only about ten miles away from us. Feeling trepidation, I shot a knowing glance at Yuan Chongxi, who understood my tacit signal and began divining what was wrong. Finally, he muttered under his breath, “I do not know how to interpret this!” Exasperated, I barked at him, “Just tell me the signs you got! I’ll interpret them myself!” He showed me what he discovered and I understood instantly! What a treacherous bastard Zheng Tong was, I cursed.

As it turned out, Zheng Tong had sent word to his allies tens of miles away from the Black Dragon Keep to make a surprise attack when he discovered that the ventilation shafts of the tunnels were sealed. Instead of realizing it was us, he had believed that it was done by the handful of guards that watched the Black Dragon Keep. The stone passage where he were hiding had no fresh air. So would the bunkers be. Without fresh air, no one would stay in the bunker, then all the fortifications would mean nothing to them.

He scrawled a quick message and attached it to a familiar spirit he kept with himself at all times: the spirit of a rodent, which I believed was behind Aunt Ulan’s curse and the arson at the granary. Although only a small and weak creature, the rodent had had years of training itself! It sped across the grassy steppes and reached Zheng Tong allies: the Eighth and the Ninth of the Thirteen Apostle. The former was a man known as Zhu Shazhi (literally, Zhu of the Red Mole) while the latter, a man with a notorious nickname, Baosang Kui (literally, the Harbinger of Death). Both of these Apostles were not skilled in sorcery or magic, but they were extremely adept in combat and fighting, hence they were regularly involved in plundering and marauding as well as the occasional wetwork. Zhu Shazhi was born Zhu Dazhi; due to a large and conspicuous red mole on his face, there was some giving him the nickname Zhu Shazhi. Baosang Kui’s actual name was Bao Sankui; but for reason that his hometown people misread san to sing or sang to san, he began adopting his ominous sobriquet even before joining the Creed of the Eight Trigrams, suggesting that he hailed from shady backgrounds even before his prominence in the occult. The two Apostles were the scourge of the surrounding regions, each of them, with their own band of highwaymen, had their fair share of robbing and raiding any vehicles that passed by within a radius of hundreds of miles. Despite the relentless efforts of the local authorities to eradicate them, the brigands, with the help of modern technology and skills in anti-surveillance, have always been able to evade whatever measures that the authorities had thrown at them, striking and retreating swiftly with the deftness of a wraith. Their talents in remaining elusive had rendered the authorities efforts as efficacious as trying to hit a fly with a bat. Such were the boons of innovation in communication, that single phone call or message with just some secret codes were sufficient for these lawless ruffians to remain at large.

Realizing that the enemy could reach our gates at any moment, I summoned one of the guards immediately. “Is there any way of communication with the main camp?” I asked her. “Handphones have no signal here. We rely only on carrier pigeons to convey our messages. We have a fresh stock of pigeons just delivered here. We have yet to even use them!” I wrote a quick message and sent it to Aunt Ulan. In the missive, I left her some instructions on what we needed and we began making gearing up on our own as I reminded everyone that no one was to fire their weapons without my green-light.

End of Volume Three